Tea? Coffee? Murder! - A Vintage Killing E-Book

Ellen Barksdale

• Herausgeber: Bastei Entertainment
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: A Cosy Crime Mystery Series with Nathalie Ames
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 169

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Who killed Stuart Burlington? Earlsraven is shaken by the news that its renowned antiques dealer has been slain with a samurai sword from his own collection. A web of secrets surrounds the case, and Nathalie and Louise - the owner of the Black Feather inn and her formidable cook - are determined to unravel it. They have an unexpected ally in the form of Hector Peroux, a celebrated private detective from Belgium. Together they are soon able to track down a suspect. But is the solution to the case really that straightforward? And what role does the enigmatic old lady, whose suspicious behaviour has been raising eyebrows, play in this puzzle?

About the series: There was nothing in the will about this...Cottages, English roses and rolling hills: that’s Earlsraven. In the middle of it all: the "Black Feather”. Not only does young Nathalie Ames unexpectedly inherit this cosy inn from her aunt, she also falls heir to her aunt’s secret double life! She solved criminal cases together with her cook Louise, a former agent of the British Crown. And while Nathalie is still trying to warm up to the quirky villagers, she discovers that sleuthing runs in the family.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Tea? Coffee? Murder! — The series

About this episode

Title

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Epilogue

About the author

Copyright

Tea? Coffee? Murder! — The series

There was nothing about that in the will …

Cottages, English roses and gently rolling hills: that is Earlsraven. In the middle of it all: the “Black Feather”. Young Nathalie Ames unexpectedly inherits this cosy café from her aunt — and her aunt’s secret double life! Henrietta solved criminal cases together with her cook Louise, a former agent of the British Crown. And while Nathalie is still trying to warm up to the quirky villagers, she discovers that sleuthing runs in the family …

About this episode

Who killed Stuart Burlington? Earlsraven is shaken by the news that its renowned antiques dealer has been slain with a samurai sword from his own collection. A web of secrets surrounds the case, and Nathalie and Louise — the owner of the Black Feather inn and her formidable cook — are determined to unravel it. They have an unexpected ally in Hector Peroux, a celebrated private detective from Belgium. Together they are soon able to track down a suspect. But is the solution to the case really that straightforward? And what role does the enigmatic old lady, whose suspicious behaviour has been raising eyebrows, play in this mystery?

Ellen Barksdale

A VINTAGE KILLING

Prologue, in which a gruesome crime occurs

“Here we are,” she said to herself, smoothing down her blazer. She brushed a strand of hair out of her face and pushed it under the brim of her hat. She stood slightly hunched, as if her back ached, and her stiff, thin fingers were covered by white gloves. Her clothes were testimony to the fashion of a time past.

She peered at her surroundings and glanced at her wristwatch. Twenty past ten.

The cottage was weathered but cosy-looking, surrounded by a battered old fence. Its low-pitched roof supported wine-red tiles, and the small windows framed authentic bull’s-eye glass panes. A tabby cat dozed on an old wooden bench near the front door. Under the bench, a blackbird was sipping from the cat’s water bowl.

She lifted the latch of the gate and pushed it open. In her left arm, the woman gingerly carried something wrapped in a thick blanket.

Despite the homely style, an “Open” sign hanging on the window of the door of the cottage indicated this was not an abode but a shop. An antique shop. Behind this door was a generously sized salesroom, crowded with antique furniture, objects d’art and curiosities.

“Good morning,” a friendly male voice rang out. “How can I help you?”

The woman looked around. “Good morning. Are you Mr Burlington?”

“Yes, I am. Stuart, in fact.”

He was in his mid-fifties, with a narrow face that seemed elongated by a high, receding hairline. His curly hair was the same shade of grey as his precisely trimmed moustache. Burlington wore a burgundy shirt, a beige tweed waistcoat and suit trousers in the same shade. His feet were in checked slippers, which did not match the rest of his clothes but were more for comfort than style.

“At your service. And you must be … Miss Moneypenny.”

“Maypenny,” she corrected him. “Annabelle Maypenny.”

“Oh, forgive me.”

She smiled at him and adjusted her silver-rimmed glasses. “Oh, don’t worry. I’d be a rich woman if I’d had a pound for every ‘Miss Moneypenny’ I’d got. A shilling even.”

Burlington nodded in amusement. “I can imagine that, Miss Maypenny,” he said, pronouncing the name with particular emphasis. “What can I do for you? You didn’t say anything specific on the phone.”

“Right. I just wanted to know whether you were free today at half past ten. Which is round about now.” She laughed and put the bundle on a table right next to Burlington. “It’s about this.” She began to unwrap the object in the blanket. “I’m not getting any younger, and I don’t want to make too much work for my family once I’m gone …”

“Oh, I bet you have many years ahead of you,” Burlington said.

“You just never know, Mr Burlington. To be honest, I don’t trust my heirs to appreciate the assets I’m leaving them. My fear is that they’ll have a decluttering service come and dump everything so they can sell my flat.” She shrugged her shoulders. “So, I’d rather sell what I have now, enjoy the money, and give very specific gifts to the relatives I like.”

“A sensible attitude,” said the trader.

“I think so.” She peeled back the last of the blanket. “Here you go.”

It was a vase that stood about thirty centimetres high. A mosaic in turquoise and blue formed the background for a harlequin head, painted so realistically that it seemed to jump out at the viewer.

Burlington shook his head in disbelief. “That looks like a Venetian vase from the middle of the 19th century,” he muttered. “It’s … If it’s what I think it is … Do you know it’s worth a fortune?”

“Well, it’s at least worth more than the fifty pounds this conman back home in Manchester was going to give me,” Miss Maypenny said. “It’s an heirloom from my Italian great-grandfather. The vase has always been in the family. Now, I have no idea if it is worth ‘only’ five hundred pounds or maybe even a thousand. But I’m not naïve enough to think that a dealer can’t pay more than fifty pounds for it.”

Burlington nodded. “Yes, those junk dealers just buy everything and pay very little. I don’t do that, I can assure you.”

“I can see that.”

He looked at the vase again. “How did you become aware of me if you’re from Manchester?”

“One of my nephews lives near here,” she explained. “We were talking on the phone, and he mentioned your shop and said he had been very well advised by you. He invited me to stay, and he’s dropped me off here and will pick me up again when we’re done.”

Burlington looked pleased. “So nice to have satisfied customers. We …”

A soft chime sounded, then a slightly louder one followed, then another. Burlington held up his finger to indicate to Annabelle Maypenny that she should wait a moment. At the same time, more and more clocks in the salesroom chimed on the half-hour. After half a minute, silence returned.

Miss Maypenny raised her eyebrows. “Well, all your antique clocks are still accurate,” she said, laughing.

Before he could reply, the door opened, and a delivery man came in. “Morning, Mr Burlington. Parcel for you.”

“I didn’t order anything.”

“A secret admirer! That was fifteen pounds extra for expedited delivery. And the contents are insured too.”

The trader looked puzzled.

“Yes. Specific delivery time today — between 10.30 and 10.40. I had to change my usual route so as not to be too early and not too late.” The parcel carrier shrugged his shoulders and joked: “Worst case scenario, there’s a bomb in there and the assassin is considerate enough not to want to blow up my car.”

“That’s not funny,” said Burlington. “Not in this day and age.”

The messenger gave a contrite look, which wasn’t wholly convincing.

“I feel so sorry for you and your colleagues,” Miss Maypenny interjected, as if to quickly change the subject.

“Sorry? Why, Miss …?”

“Maypenny. Annabelle Maypenny,” she replied. “Well, you’re sent here and there all day, you’re always in a hurry. And on top of that you have to meet spurious deadlines, that the recipient doesn’t even know anything about.”

The parcel carrier shrugged his shoulders. “I just do my job and try to be nice to people.” He held out a tablet to Burlington, letting him use his pen to acknowledge receipt. “Have a nice day.” Then he left the shop.

Miss Maypenny pointed to the parcel Burlington was holding. “I suppose you’ll want to open it — find out what’s so important.”

“No, no,” he said. “The customer comes first.”

He went behind his desk, typed something into the computer, then pulled a thick catalogue from the shelf to his right and began to leaf through it. Now and then he glanced up at the vase, shook his head as if in thought, and continued searching.

“Do you have any coins?” she asked. “My granddaughter collects coins, and I’m wondering if we could exchange some of the value of the vase for coins.” She looked around. “If you tell me where I can find them, I could have a look while you’re doing … whatever you’re doing.”

“The coins are in the safe,” he replied. He was sifting through the information listed in the thick catalogue and on the internet.

Miss Maypenny went to the corner where Burlington had gathered objects from East Asia. Above a red-lacquered chest of drawers hung a selection of samurai swords. She removed the one hanging at the bottom from its holder. She looked at the immaculate blade, holding it so it reflected the sunshine coming through a window behind the desk.

Burlington cleared his throat. It sounded as if he had to tell her something unpleasant about the vase. Perhaps that it wasn’t even worth the fifty pounds she’d been offered in Manchester.

“Tell me, can you prove that this vase has been in your family for generations?” he finally asked.

“Why do you ask? Is there a problem?”

Burlington waved her off. “No, not as such …” he said, but didn’t sound very convincing. “First I have to establish a few things before I then make you an offer.”

“I have another suggestion,” said Miss Maypenny.

“Another suggestion?” asked Burlington, looking up from his monitor. The last thing he saw was the old woman lunging at him with a samurai sword. He felt the cold blade touch him, followed by a brutal pain. Burlington lost consciousness and slumped in his chair.

Miss Maypenny stood there, waiting a few minutes until she was certain that the man had stopped moving. She hung the samurai sword back on the wall, but did not wipe off the blood. Then she took the bunch of keys that lay on the desk in front of Burlington and locked the front door. She returned to the desk, stepped around it, and crouched down in front of an old black safe, an antique in its own right. The key to the safe was quickly found, and in no time she had opened it. Inside were several jewellery boxes, as well as two folders of coins. Finally, she came across a slightly larger leather case. A glance inside it made her eyes light up. She took the case out of the safe, wrapped the vase back up in its protective blanket and walked to unlock the door. There she turned the “Open” sign around to indicate “Closed”, locked the door, and threw the bunch of keys under the bench.

The cat on the bench lifted its head languidly and looked at Miss Maypenny with narrowed eyes. “You’d better catch some mice today, darling,” Miss Maypenny told her, “because no one is going to feed you any time soon.” The cat gave a grim meow, probably because her peace was disturbed, stretched and went back to sleep.

With the case and the vase in her arms, Miss Maypenny set off again.

Chapter One, in which Nathalie makes new acquaintances and someone makes a gruesome discovery

“Tonight, I’ll come here with my camera and then we’ll do the whole thing again, but professionally,” said Bill Purvis as he walked with Nathalie from the Black Feather to the car park.

“Is that necessary?” she asked. “You can see quite well from the mobile phone photos which pieces of furniture are involved.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Miss Ames,” the man replied, stopping to pull the car key out of his pocket. “You see it that way because you know this furniture. Everyone else only sees the photo — and that just shows some old furniture. Good photos and lighting will make all the difference.”

Nathalie shrugged. “You’re the professional, Mr Purvis.”

“Shall we say … seven o’clock? Does that suit you?”

“Yes, seven o’clock sounds good. If something comes up, I’ll call you,” she promised, and said goodbye.

Purvis got into his red Toyota pick-up. Nathalie was about to return to the pub when she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, that someone was coming towards her. She turned and saw Louise Cartham, her cook and right-hand woman at the Black Feather. She was more than that though. For as a former agent of a still nameless secret service — “it wouldn’t be a secret service if I told you the name” — she had the most unusual contacts. Thanks to these contacts, and thanks to a remarkable archive that Nathalie’s Aunt Henrietta had bequeathed to her along with the combination of pub, café and boarding house, they had together succeeded in solving three crimes and convicting the perpetrators in the last few months.

Crime fighting was naturally the responsibility of the local policeman, Constable Ronald Strutner, but he was described by Louise as, amongst other things, “adorable but dim-witted”. Nathalie’s late aunt had taken a fancy to the man, however, and had actively supported him in his police work to prevent him from being transferred as soon as one of his superiors noticed his terrible working methods.

Nathalie couldn’t shake off the suspicion that Strutner wasn’t quite as obtuse as people thought, but had merely pretended to be because he liked that Henrietta wanted to help him. Nathalie had inherited the role of helping Strutner, but, in the long run, she wanted to try to steer him a little more in the direction of independence. Then they’d find out if he had a decent brain hiding in that head after all.

“Louise, what are you looking so grim about?”

“Grim? I’m furious,” Louise replied, straightening her black Iron Maiden T-shirt. Her edgy short hairstyle made her look many years younger, despite the grey. Today she was sporting leather trousers too. A brave look. “Graham didn’t show up.”

“Probably your rock chick outfit scared him,” Nathalie returned with a grin. “Isn’t eleven in the morning a bit early for a date anyway?”

“Not for brunch. But it wasn’t a date.”

“What was it? Who’s Graham?” asked Nathalie.

“Jimmy Graham. The potato farmer,” said Louise. “He promised me he’d meet me and bring this new variety … well, an old variety, actually.”

“An old variety?” repeated Nathalie. “He doesn’t sell old stock, does he?”

Louise looked irritated. “Of course not. I mean heritage varieties that were grown fifty or a hundred years ago but were displaced by new varieties that are more resistant to disease or easier to care for. This happens with all kinds of fruit and vegetables, especially apples. Local varieties are displaced by imported ones, and after a while the old varieties are forgotten. Have you really never heard of this?”

“Yeah, remember I lived in the city until a few months ago,” Nathalie pointed out. “We townies don’t know much about hundred-year-old potatoes.”

“I keep forgetting you’re an incomer.” She patted Nathalie on the shoulder. “You’ve lost that urbanista style already.” Louise looked at her with mock pride.

A honk made them both sit up, and as they turned towards the car park, they saw Purvis waving at them as he drove away.

“Never mind about about my heritage-potato date — what about your dates that seem to happen whenever I leave the house. First Rob Hayle, who was supposedly going to restore some murals, and today … I believe that’s Bill Purvis is it not? The antiques dealer? What’s really going on, Miss Ames?” she teased. “Are you hiding something from me?”

“Oh that? It was quite spontaneous,” she said. “Sit down for a minute and I’ll tell you.” She pointed to a free table on the terrace, and they took a seat. “Purvis came to the café this morning to have his thermos filled with coffee, as usual. Now, I had received another phone call last night …”

“From whom?” said Louise.

“Excuse me, Louise,” said Nathalie and laughed. “Let me add a bit of drama to my tale without interruption. You always have great stories from your time as a … souped-up civil servant … I want to add a bit of excitement to my slightly mundane tale.”

The older woman laughed. “Sorry. Won’t interrupt you again.”

“So, it was a call that kept me up half the night, and when I saw Purvis come in this morning, I thought I’d just ask his advice.”

She paused and looked at Louise, who was leaning forward in her chair to hear the whole story.

“I wanted to know from him if my aunt’s furniture was still worth anything or if it should just be taken to the dump.”

“Dump your aunt’s furniture! You want …”

“Louise!”

“I didn’t say anything, I didn’t make a sound.”

“A situation has arisen that requires me to make two decisions. Depending on what my first decision is, I have to think about what to do with Henrietta’s furniture. I could keep it, or I could sell it. Everything in the flat reminds me of my aunt, so if I get rid of it, I might regret it. It also might feel like banishing her from her own home. On the other hand, the flat feels a bit like a museum. I still feel like I’m a visitor.”

To avoid another rebuke, Louise raised her hand in a jokey manner and only spoke when Nathalie nodded in agreement. “Why don’t you ask yourself what your aunt would have wanted? Do you think Henrietta would have wanted you feel like you were just visiting? Don’t you think Henrietta would have expected you to regard the Black Feather as your own and make the changes you need to. She wouldn’t have expected everything to always stay the same.”

Nathalie nodded. “Yes, that’s what I’ve been telling myself. I toyed with the idea of using at least one or two things for the guest rooms. But the rooms are all so awkwardly shaped that none of Henrietta’s things would fit. That’s why I spoke to Purvis about it.”

“So, what was his verdict?”

She shrugged slightly. “It’s all still in good condition. He wants to offer it to a few of his clients, but to do that he has to show them decent photos, so he’s coming back here tonight and bringing his good camera.”

“If you’re definitely parting with Henrietta’s furniture, you’ll want me to help you pick new stuff, right?”

“No, I … I’ll have the furniture brought from my own place.”

Louise looked at her with shock. “You’re selling your flat in Liverpool? I thought you wanted to be sure about staying here first.” Smiling delightedly, she then asked, “What made you realise you didn’t have to wait a year to decide? Who called you last night?”

“Glenn.”

“Ah. How’s his countryside allergy?”

“More like a phobia,” Nathalie replied.

“And what did he say to make you want to run away for good?” asked Louise suspiciously.

Nathalie waved it off. “I’m not running away. And he didn’t tell me anything bad either. He’s found a potential buyer for my flat who wants to sign the contract sooner rather than later. This is anopportunity for me. Who knows if I’ll ever get that much money for my flat again.”

“And there’s no catch?”

“At least not for me. The buyer’s offering a good twenty percent more than I wanted for the flat.”

“Why?”

“I guess Glenn’s a convincing salesman,” Nathalie said. “He had even added thirty percent to the asking price and let the buyer bargain. He’s happy that he got a discount, and I’m happy because I get more for my flat.”

“And Glenn? Is he happy to be rid of you now, or …? I mean, what was his intention?”